The invention concerns a device for emptying rectangular open-top mail piece containers. When sorting flat mail pieces in sorting machines, appropriate mail piece containers are used. On the one hand, mail piece containers are inserted into the sorting machine, into which the parcels are sorted directly and removed from the machine either manually or automatically after completion of the sorting cycle. Alternatively, the mail pieces may be sorted into rigid compartments, from which the mail pieces are then removed manually or automatically and transferred into mail piece containers. The mail pieces are stored intermediately in these containers and then processed through subsequent processing steps. These could be both a second sorting cycle on the same sorting machine, e.g., for delivery sequence sorting, or an additional sorting cycle on another sorting machine.
For emptying containers filled with mail pieces so far the following solutions have become known:
1. Tipping the container by 180xc2x0 toward a loading surface (dumping the contents of the container)
In DE 195 45 716 C1 the container, in which the mail pieces are positioned in an upright standing position, is automatically pivoted onto a feeding line between two shiftable and pivotable separators for separation.
This is a rather complex solution, the mail pieces are subjected to strong forces during the pivoting process and stacking quality cannot be guaranteed.
2. Opening of one lateral wall or of the bottom of the container and emptying by dropping the mail pieces or pushing them out.
3. Pushing open an additional container bottom.
These solution variants also require rather involved auxiliary kinematic devices for lifting and lowering the mail pieces or for the opening and shutting of container bottoms and/or of lateral walls. In this process the mail pieces may also become wrongly oriented.
A solution is known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,005,792 in which the mail piece containers feature continuous bottom recesses with which supporting fingers underneath the mailpieces can engage. Subsequently, the supporting fingers and the container are moved on two levels by means of a complex mechanism in such a way that the mail pieces are pushed on a feeding bed of a material feeding device.
The invention, which is explained in Claim 1, is therefore based on the task of developing a functionally reliable device for emptying mail piece containers, in which the orientation and quality of the stacks are preserved, while the required kinematic motion processes are reduced to a minimum. The combination of the elements of supporting fingers, recesses in the container bottom, lateral guiding elements on the mail piece containers and guiding tracks with openings for the guiding elements in the area of the supporting fingers has the effect that when shifting the mail piece containers the mail pieces remain on the supporting fingers, while the mail piece container moves in a downward direction. This means that the mail pieces are not taken out of the mail piece container or removed from it by changing their position or orientation, but they remain in their positions and the mail piece container is removed with little effort.
Advantageous embodiments of the invention are explained in the subordinate claims.
According to Claim 2 it is advantageous to guide the mail piece containers during the downward movement in order to, e.g., guarantee secure stacking of these empty mail piece containers.
According to Claim 3 the empty mail piece containers advantageously arrive at a conveying device, e.g., a conveying belt for transportation to a container collecting point.
If the mail pieces are, according to Claim 4, transported in the mail piece container in a lying horizontal position, it is, according to Claim 5, advantageous to equip the supporting fingers with driven narrow transport belts permitting the transport of the mail pieces beyond the supporting fingers to a further transporting device or to workstations.
If, however, the mail pieces are stacked within the mail piece container in such a way that they stand on their narrow sides in a direction perpendicular to the direction of the shifting device according to Claim 6, the stack of mail pieces, according to an advantageous embodiment according to Claim 7, is held by means of force-adapted supports through the container wall openings and then moved further when the mail piece container has completed its downward movement. In this case as well, the mail piece stack remains uncompromised during unloading with regard to its orientation and stack quality.
By reducing the number of necessary kinematic motion processes to a minimum, semiautomatic or fully automatic emptying can be realized in a simple way. When operating the device manually, the operator holds the stack and pushes it and with it the mail piece container over the supporting fingers along the guiding tracks toward a transfer point for further treatment. The container is moved in a downward direction by gravity; i.e., no further kinematic movements or energy consumption are required. Also, a semiautomatic or fully automatic removal of the mail piece containers can be easily implemented through the movement of the mail piece containers from the processing area downward. The emptying process overall is functionally very reliable. Below, the invention is more closely described based on an embodiment example drawing. The figures show: